Pros:
*Carved/ painted wooden signs at the short tees showing distances and general hole layout and an arrow indicating next tee
*Variety in both shot type and distance, including a couple ace runs and one hilltop bomber
*Plenty of risk/reward situations to analyze
*Hole 9 finishes right next to the parking area for easy refilling on whatever you need, and a gas station is a 3 minute walk up the road
*Dual tee pads provide approachable fun for various skill levels, all are level concrete and of a decent size
*A bunch of newer benches and trashcans located about every other hole
*Other than hole 10 which plays near the softball field and overflow parking which may spill near or onto 1's fairway, there are no real safety/interference issues with respect to other park users
Cons:
*No water hazards
*Signage at long pads just shows hole# and distance
*A few fairways play fairly close together
*The new concrete short tee pads are nearly devoid of texture, and will be slick when wet
*Parking is shared with a softball diamond, which can fill up during the summer and overflow onto part of #1's fairway
Other Thoughts:
Each hole at Deerwood has short and long tees, all concrete as of this spring, which both play to a common basket. Roughly half of the long tees result in stretched-out versions of the short lines and create only slight increases in difficulty, while others require much higher drive precision and/or completely different shots than you need from the shorts. Overall there is a good balance between completely wooded holes and those where you need to accurately throw into or out of wooded areas, with a couple of wide-open bombers mixed in. There are also a number of "local lines" that are available to the creative DG'er if you look at the trees with the right kind of eyes. Nothing physically taxing here, other than a couple small hill climbs. The course plays about 1.2 miles long and I can get through a casual solo round in about an hour without hurrying.
The topography is generally flat with some small hills, but what little elevation there is has been well utilized. Hole 18 is an obvious example of this, while other holes present a basket below or up on a small protected hillside, or have you teeing off from below a small rise to add that little extra bit of difficulty. #14 short has been recently changed to a very miniature across-the-valley shot, where you shoot from the top of a small hill across not even 200ft of open space to a basket on top of another small hill. A cool improvement and a nice shot to find on a short layout.
Fairways are generally pretty open, but a few nice tunnel shots are present (3 short, 5 long, 8 long, 13 either tee, 14 long). Get off the fairway, though, and you can find yourself in anything from long grass and scattered saplings to full-on jail, with the toughest rough often in play on the harder holes. Like most wooded courses, you'll encounter a shot or two that requires nearly equal parts skill and luck, but not nearly to the point of being unfair. A few holes do let you truly air out a drive, and #18 is the best of them. You tee from the top of a dike, which rises perhaps 40ft above the field of play to a basket 550' away with plenty of fairway width to accommodate all but the most errant drives. An OB road runs along your left the whole way, though, so watch that crosswind.
In the interest of full disclosure, you should know that this is my home course. There are a couple other nearby courses that I like better (Exchange Park is ~15 minutes away, Wildcat Bluff is ~35 minutes) but I'm about 7 minutes from Deerwood and that includes a beer stop. I've been playing here regularly for 5+ years and it remains hard enough to keep me engaged while staying fun enough to keep me coming back, and shooting par from the long pads feels like a good round with a little room for improvement. The course is right next to (and visible from) Hwy 20 at the River Forest Road exit, so if you are passing by and only have an hour or two to throw, Deerwood is your best option in the area.
*local tip - toss your empty cans/bottles on the ground next to the trash cans instead of in. a couple can-collecting dbags like to dump out the garbage to get at the redeemables and leave the trash on the ground.